The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz Bjarne - Logia

The Consecration |
Verba. Chemnitz, however, observes that perhaps “someone says that a person eats bread
unworthily. The answer is: Paul does not refer simply to bread, but he says ‘this bread.’
But what bread is this? It is the bread which according to the Word of Institution is the body
of the Lord given for us” (LS 131, emphasis added). A few paragraphs later Chemnitz again
emphasizes the point by asking what bread is it that one eats that incurs guilt, “But what
bread? The bread which Christ affirms is His body” (LS 132). All the elements that came
under the words of Christ at the consecration are His body and blood. And hence it is by
partaking of those particular elements that one may eat unworthily and become guilty of
the body and blood of Christ.
75. The translation in the Tappert edition of the Book of Concord is misleading,“It was against
such papistic abuses that this rule was first formulated and explained by Dr. Luther.” The
translation seems to say that Luther not only explained the rule but first formulated it. The
German and Latin versions only say that the rule was originally established, and that the
reference to Luther is only in connection with the word” explain.” The Triglot translates,
“For against such papistic abuses this rule has been set up at the beginning [of the reviving
Gospel] and has been explained by Dr. Luther himself, Tom IV, Jena.“
76. WA Br. X, 348 f. The English translation of both of these letters is from E. F. Peters,
Extra Usum Nullum Sacramentum: The Origin and Meaning of the Axiom: Nothing Has the
Character, etc.; a Th.D. dissertation at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 1968, p. 198 f.
77. Another attempt has recently been made to identify the Jena edition reference as being
something other than the Wolferinus correspondence. Prof. Siegbert Becker in the essay,
“An Unidentified Luther Reference” (in Luther Lives, Essays in Commemoration of the 500th
Anniversary of Martin Luther’s Birth, Milwaukee, NPH, 1983, pp. 157–168), maintains that
the reference is to some of Luther’s correspondence with the Einsiedel family in 1528. He
evidently intends this paper to be an answer to Prof. Bjarne W.Teigen’s“The Case of the Lost
Luther Reference” (CTQ, Ft. Wayne, Oct. 1979, pp. 295–309) (P. 159). On going through
volume IV of the German Jena edition and examining these two letters (1566 Jena ed., fol.
316b; St. L. XXla, 1092 f.), he concludes that “it seems evident that the reference . . . in FC
SD 87 is a reference to the German edition. The Wolferinus correspondence does not fit the
facts of the case” (p. 162).
Prof. Becker bases his conclusion on the following reasons: There is a more marked
similarity between SD VII, 85 and the Einsiedel letters than between the Wolferinus letters
and the SD; the rule was “formulated and proclaimed by ‘Dr. Luther himself,’” and not one
formulated by Melanchthon, as in the case of the Wolferinus correspondence (162); the
rule was formulated at the beginning “of the reviving Gospel” (the addition in the Latin
version of SD VII, 87), which points more to 1528 than 1543 (162); this rule of Luther [i.e.,
in the Einsiedel letters] was set up in opposition to the pap is tic abuses of the mass (162);
the words of SD VII, 85–87 (“extra usum a Christo institutum . . . extra actionem divinitus
institutum”) are apparently an echo of the remark Luther makes in the second opinion [i.e.,
the second letter to the Einsiedels] (159).
But thoughtful consideration of Prof. Becker’s reasons for identifying the SD VII, 87
reference with the Einsiedel correspondence renders such an identification quite implausible
and unacceptable.
Prof. Becker does not inform us as to the person who received the letters; as a matter
of fact, one might quite naturally gain the impression that these two letters were answers
to different requests for “opinions.” There is no doubt that Luther wrote many letters to
different persons on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (e.g., see note #73 for Luther’s letter
to the Frankfurt Christians), but in this case the two letters are directed to one person